Faecal calprotectin as a marker for oesophago-gastric cancer

Faecal calprotectin has been shown to be useful as a non-invasive screening test to differentiate functional from organic bowel disease, and it has been noted to be elevated in colorectal cancer. The aim of this study was to describe concentrations of faecal calprotectin in patients with oesophago-gastric cancer and investigate any potential discriminatory power of the test.

Faecal calprotectin was measured in samples from 39 patients with known oesophago-gastric cancer and in 191 samples from control subjects.

The median calprotectin concentration was < 20 µg/g (range <  20-421 µg/g) in control subjects and 97 µg/g (range < 20-940 µg/g) in patients with oesophago-gastric cancer (P < 0.001). A receiver operating characteristic curve gave an area under the ROC curve of 0.84 and a sensitivity of 76.9% (95% CI: 63.7-90.1%) and specificity of 88.0% (95% CI: 83.3-92.6%) at a cutoff of 50 µg/g.

Faecal calprotectin is elevated in patients with cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract. This study suggests that calprotectin may be promising in discriminating cancer patients from controls, but further work is required to explore any potential role of faecal calprotectin in screening for, or diagnosis of, oesophago-gastric cancer.